However, Alain Touwaide makes a statement that makes even more sense: “I believe that it doesn’t prove anything. If it’s a forgery, someone could very well have had the idea of creating the forgery on the basis of New World flora. At the most, it shows a possible source of the forgery.”

Anyone feel daring enough to make a fool of himself, to venture a guess that anything we recognize as psychic phenomenon (by that, I mean the things which aren’t total bullshit to begin with) and the soul might come out of the research in quantum biology? The New Age quacks will be all over this, building elaborate systems out of these fragments of information that will rival any role playing game. However, simple universal mechanism isn’t going to work for explaining every biological system much longer.

The theory of wolves approaching human then getting lured into domestication with the opportunity for free food seems quaint, doesn’t it? There seems something in the psyche of monkeys and apes that is wired to adopt other animals into their communities for protection.

I’d seen mention of the Red Deer people for a few years now. After the Denisovans turned up, I failed to remember them, although I eagerly anticipated some interesting fossils that had already been discovered in China being re-examined in this new context. The new paper states that no genetic material has been recovered from these bones. All that is know so far is that these bones have archaic features that are unusual for that time and region. They might be Denisovans, have Denisovan admixture, or have a different lineage altogether.

The most remarkable part is that these bones are between 14,300 and 11,500 years old, which is really damned recent.